The Non-Stick Relationship
What healthy looks like
First, let’s talk about what the “sticky” in a relationship is. Simply put, if I had to cut straight to the chase, it’s the dysfunction. But it doesn’t feel like dysfunction. It feels like a New York slice straight from the oven. At three AM while you’re drunk and starving. It’s hot, drippy, delicious, and you can’t get enough of it. Until of course, the stomach ache hits.
The sticky in a relationship is the codependency and enmeshment that runs underneath like a river, turning love into possession and two complete people into one incomplete. The feeling produced by this process is a cocaine high and what many people mistake as “true love”.
Where does it come from?
Everything we didn’t receive as a child. From the lack we feel in ourselves. From society’s shoulds and the giant ticking clock we claim to ignore. From old wounds we are not healing. From our own fears and insecurities. From what smells familiar from old relationship patterns. Our inability to draw boundaries. From learned dysfunctional relationship dynamics (usually parents). From the absent father. From our addictions or the gene in our family tree. From lack of trusting oneself. From sexual abuse. From not doing work on ourselves. I can go on but I’ll stop here or this article will turn into an ebook.
